With more than a century's worth of hands-on experience between the four of them, Jack, Stuart, Turtie and C are veterans of the fight against what they see as animal exploitation and cruelty.

Over the decades they have taken direct action against the hunting of foxes, otters, ducks and deer and are now determined to do all in their power to disrupt the trial badger cull.

"It will be up to each individual to decide what they are prepared to do," said C, "But I'll get between the guns and the badgers if necessary. I think quite a few others will do the same."

This weekend the four were one of a number of activists out in a soggy Forest of Dean getting ready to thwart the marksmen.

Plans had been afoot to hold a full moon rave in the Gloucestershire forest on what the anti-cull brigade had anticipated could be the first weekend of the shooting.

But the opening volleys have yet to be fired and so instead the likes of C and his colleagues spent the weekend preparing: mapping setts and familiarising themselves with the lie of the land so they will be ready when the cull does begin.

They have a huge job on their hands. The cull area in Gloucestershire is 116 sq miles (300 sq km), much of it within private land hard to access.

But they are not going from a standing start. C and Jack say they sabotaged more than 6,000 traps over six years during the Krebs trial badger cull, which began in the late 90s, and so know much of the area well.

On Saturday, they estimate they mapped about 23 sq miles (60 sq km) in the north of the forest, which they are not so familiar with because it was not part of the Krebs cull.

Jack admits he suffers from a touch of sciatica and so is not as nimble as he used to be, but fortunately for these veterans it appears that a new generation of activists is joining the fight against the cull.

On Sunday, C took out a group of 20 newcomers to the animal rights movement, teaching them how to map the setts, how to spot areas cleared for shooting, tutoring them in the law on trespass, advising them on the sorts of methods they could use – from setting off rape alarms to blowing vuvuzela horns – to disrupt the shooting when it starts.

"We've got a large area to cover but we know it well and there are hundreds of new people coming in who want to help," said C.

A 21-year-old student from Worcestershire, she said this was her first taste of direct action. "I haven't really been into this sort of thing before but I've read the articles on the science behind the cull and it just doesn't seem to make sense to me. They seem to be killing the badgers to try to stay on the right side of the farmers. It can't be right. What will they do if this doesn't work. Go after the deer? Do they just want to kill all our wildlife?"

A second licence for an area in Somerset is expected to be issued any day now.

But one of the organisations set up to try to prevent the shooting by taking direct action, Stop the Cull, has suggested the cull may not go ahead this year because farmers in the cull zones are not stumping up the money needed to fund it.

They claim some farmers in the cull zone are wavering because they have felt intimidated by people lurking near their farms and do not believe they can be protected by the police. The farmers' union, the NFU, insists its members within the cull zones remain steadfast.

The champions of direct action are not the only ones continuing to fight the cull. Almost 140,000 people have signed a petition against the cull created by the rock star Brian May on the government's website.

The Humane Society International is pursuing a complaint against the government with the Bern convention, a European treaty to protect wildlife while the Badger Trust has also pledged to pursue any legal route to challenge culling licences.

Those against the cull are taking heart from growing local political unease. The Conservative-led Forest of Dean district council has passed a motion banning badger culling on its land. This is a gesture as it only has a few acres but more significantly is contacting all landowners within its boundary to request them to refuse any culling of badgers.

Labour councillor Jackie Fraser, who proposed the motion, said she believed most people in the Forest of Dean were against the cull. "They think the badger is a much-maligned creature," she said.

In addition, members of a Gloucestershire county council committee has asked the authority to review its policy of badger culling on its land.

Another factor that could affect the cull is the weather. Though badgers do not hibernate, they do lie low during the worst of the winter weather.

Jan Rowe, a Gloucestershire farmer who speaks for the NFU on bovine TB, told the Guardian that the ideal time for the six-week cull to have taken place would have been between August and the end of October. He said the cull, which has to take place over a six-week continuous spell, needed to begin by mid-October.

Rowe insisted farmers in the cull area were paying up and accused the Stop the Cull campaign of trying to divide and rule by claiming that farmers were wavering. "I believe and hope the cull will go ahead within the next few weeks," he said.